The insects had swarmed back out of the house as soon as the sun began to edge toward the horizon, but at the first stroke of the Bone Man’s fingers over the strings they’d crowded to a stop inches from where he sat. They milled and leapt but not one of them could cross the line from field to forest. The rustle of the bugs and the murmur of the trees in the wind of the Hollow both carried a tone of absolute surprise and total outrage.
The Bone Man played as fast as he could, but his mind was reeling from this. When he had strummed his guitar the best he had hoped for was to spur Crow and his friend to run faster. He had never expected this, could never have imagined this.
He didn’t understand it, and even feared that it was all some kind of joke on Griswold’s part—a trick to raise hopes before he closed his fist around Crow for real—but as the minutes passed and the sound of running feet diminished behind him, the Bone Man slowly changed his view. This wasn’t any of Griswold’s doing, no sir. This was something else—the sign of someone else in the game.
Who or why didn’t matter right now. He played and played and prayed that whatever strange magic was at work here would last long enough.
(7)
“Hurry—hurry—hurry!” Newton chanted in a frenzied whisper as he ran; next to him Crow ran in silence. Above them the clouds melted away but the forest did not brighten. The sun hung low and swollen above the far treeline, its fiery corona just singeing the treetops. Night was falling and they were miles from the pitch, with the whole of Dark Hollow between them and safety, and the devil knew what lay behind or before them. By now neither Crow nor Newton was much counting on the world being sane and predictable. That moment seemed to have passed for them, forever perhaps, when they had crossed the line from sunlight to shadows back on the pitch, or perhaps it was when they had entered that marshy swamp. Perhaps both. Two steps into hell.
Newton turned to look back the way they had come, half expecting to see the tide of roaches sweeping back, but all he saw were shadows. More shadows than when he had looked back only a minute ago. Darker, thicker, closing in on them as the sun began its fatal fall beyond the forest uplands on the far side of Griswold’s farm. Newton could no longer see the farm, or the fields, or even the tall-tree line. He looked at his watch. 6:11. What had Crow told him? Sunset was at 6:24.
“The sun’s going down!” he shrieked, but Crow didn’t waste breath replying to that.
A tiny pain flared against Newton’s thigh and he stooped and began smacking hysterically at it, thinking that another of those bugs had crawled up his pants and bitten him, but this was different. A small burning spot three-quarters of the way up the top of his thigh, but when he dug into his pocket to see what he could feel all he brought out was the tarnished old dime with the hole cut through it. Newton peered at it as he ran, looking to see if there was a sharp edge or anything that could explain the sudden pain, but it was just an old dime. The burning in his thigh faded and he raised his arm to throw the dime away, but for the second time that day he made the decision to keep it. He put it back in his pocket and raced to catch up with Crow as the shadows coalesced behind him.
Fatigue was a huge fiery dragon that breathed hotly in their flushed faces, sat on their chests, and bit them in the sides. They slowed from a dead run to a staggering walk and Crow pulled the canteen from Newton’s pack, took a pull and handed it to the reporter. Newton opened his mouth to say something but Crow held up a hand to silence him and stood there, head cocked in an attitude of listening. He thought he had heard something impossible, something they had both heard before starting down the hill. Was it the ghost of an echo of music on the sluggish breeze?
“Is it the bugs?” Newton hissed.
Crow listened a moment longer and then shook his head. He let out a chestful of air. “No…I guess it’s nothing. I think we’re safe.” But doubt was evident in his voice. “Either way, I don’t want to wait around to find out.”
“Why didn’t they come after us again?”
“I don’t know. Come on, let’s keep moving.”
At a quick walk—both of them were now beyond running—they set out down the path, picking their way along by starlight, fleeing from the marsh with its methane vapors and stink of rot, far along the valley floor toward the foot of the pitch. It seemed to take hours, days. They didn’t stop again until they saw the great slab-sided slope rise before them, then they rested, drinking the last of their water. The climbing ropes were still there, leading up through shadows and becoming invisible in the gloom far above them.
Crow found his gloves where they had left them hours ago and slowly fitted them on as he studied the angle of the slope. He nodded to Newton with an uptic of his chin. “What shape are you in?”
“I’m a wreck.”
